Feels nice. Probably will bump down significantly as the day goes on. That being said, some of the times on here are ridiculous:

Looking at my Letterboxd average review scores and it seems like I have a four-star wall:

This isn’t as prominent as some I’ve seen. But it did get me thinking about why this is. Most importantly– I don’t like watching bad movies. To borrow words from a famous food critic, if I know I won’t like a movie, “I don’t swallow.” That reasonably skews my movie selection in the direction of things I’ll rate higher (i.e. above three-ish stars). I also have very limited time as a dad, so I need to choose wisely.

That being said, I tend to root for movies. Even when they’re uneven, I will rate them well if I enjoyed myself. Two and two-and-a-half feel reserved for movies I genuinely didn’t enjoy, but were still watchable, in a sort of “this sure is a movie” sense. Anything below that is borderline unwatchable. Most movies I watch are “meh” or better, so three and up it is.

(On the other side of the wall, four and half is reserved for movies I think are great and some of my favorites. A full five indicates a movie I struggle to find fault with. Obviously pretty rare.)

In January I made a list of goals for this year. Now that we’re in May, it’s a good time to check up on them:

Downsize ✅

We moved (ironically into a larger place) and in the process found a boatload of stuff to get rid of. Having a garage sale later this month so I’m considering this checked!

Read a book each month ❌

Failed. Missed February and April. But I’m not going to let that stop me from reading the rest of this year. That’s kind of the benefit of an early streak-breaker. It means you no longer have the pressure to uphold the streak, and you can focus on the enjoyment of it instead! The next book I’m starting is Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Finding it hard to break into the worldbuilding of it. Sometimes it’s tough to hold it all in my brain.

Brush up on a language ❌

No way. I have not touched a single language learning thing this year. Not happening, sorry past me. Maybe next year.

Establish a workout rhythm ✅(?)

Yes kinda, I’m biking to work maybe half the time so I guess that’s something of a rhythm. Would love to do something for my upper body cause I’m a puny weakling. We’ll see. It’s hard to fit gyms into my life right now, so I guess I need to figure out at-home workouts. Tips recommended.

Use public transit ✅(?)

On rainy or exceptionally windy days when I have the time I’ll take the bus. It’s about twice as long as on bike, but it’s not so bad. Gives me more opportunity to read. Santa Cruz is putting in a bus priority lane on the highway so there’s a good chance my bus ride frequency will increase.

Unlock the power of Costco ❌

Not yet. Still studying the ancient texts.

Well I guess a 50% success rate is alright. It’s ok to make goals and then later realize they aren’t priorities anymore. That’s part of life!

Earlier this year, I told Anna that I had the desire to watch some sort of sport. I’ve watched football and baseball with my parents growing up, but I’ve never really made it my own. It would be nice to cheer on a team for the first time in years, in my own understated way. I settled on baseball and soccer and picked teams:

• The SF Giants seemed to be doing pretty well this off-season in terms of signings, so I decided to start watching them more this season. Since then, they have had a pretty terrible record (the Oakland A’s are doing better - which is saying something) and have lost some very embarrassing games (17-1 loss to the D-Backs comes to mind).
• I decided to follow Tottenham Hotspur on the advice of a friend. The first game I watched, sort of still on the fence, they won handily. I love the coach, and seemed like a neat culture, so I decided to go all in on supporting them. Immediately following, they’ve had their worst losing streak in nearly 20 years. Come on you spurs…
• And I’ve been following Bay FC, because they’re the new kids on the block in the NWSL, have some world class players, and it’s exciting to have a soccer team in the bay that actually seems competitive (looking at you, Earthquakes). Well… maybe seemed competitive. They’ve now lost six of their eight games played thus far.

So I guess if you have a sports team you love, you ought to start pitching me on becoming a fan of your rivals.

Yesterday, Scott Wiener announced a bill that would see speed governors installed in all vehicles sold in California starting in 2027. I think this is fantastic. And not just the term “speed governor” which evokes the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Mach 5.

I am so sorry.

Anyways I think it’s ridiculous that we just sell cars that can go 100+ mph and think humans can resist the temptation. But some of the biggest benefits might come at lower speeds.

If you get hit by a car traveling about 25 mph, there’s about a 10% chance of you dying, and a 25% chance of you getting severely injured. That’s the standard speed limit for most neighborhoods (but frankly depending on the neighborhood that can feel too fast).

Say someone’s late for work and trying to shave off a minute of their drive, and they hit you at a speed of about 40 mph. Your chances of death just jumped to 50% and your chance of severe injury is 75%. Basically it’s a small miracle if you’re at all ok after that. 35 mph is a standard for busier city streets and arteries, and I’d wager most people go at least 40 in a 35 zone.

I greatly dislike the culture around speeding. Especially people bragging about how much time they shaved off their 30 minute commute. The fact is speeding often doesn’t get you places noticeably quicker – the risk:reward ratio is terrible. Maybe you save 5 minutes: what are you going to do with all that time on your hands?

That being said, it’s not uncommon for me to realize I’m speeding because I got distracted by something and wasn’t paying close attention. I think it’s a shame we built our country’s transportation infrastructure around a system where people die if a human gets too distracted, and then built our economy around things that distract humans.

Regardless of the reason for speeding, we don’t need it. If we can save lives by limiting the speed of cars, then we needed it to happen yesterday.

In this episode of the Techdirt podcast there’s a particularly great metaphor Ravi Iyer uses to describe bad algorithms that reinforce content you don’t want to see more of, and yet draws you in:

I will eat donuts, and so I kind of “want” donuts, by one definition of “want.” I will eat them if you put them in front of me. But I don’t aspire to eat more donuts. I want to eat healthier food, right?

When my wife was pregnant a couple years ago, Instagram started serving her more and more posts from people who had traumatic birthing stories, or who had lost babies, either during childbirth or soon after. When something like that comes up, you can’t exactly look away. Especially for her (and for me) being a hardcore empath. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that people post about their real stories, in fact I encourage it. But for Instagram to identify that she was more “engaged” with these posts and then to say “I bet she wants more!” is pretty messed up. It’s a negative spiral that might have driven her to spend more time on the platform (thus increasing her value as a user, from Instagram’s view) but produced a very negative mental impact on her. That’s what people talk about when wanting to get away from the algorithm.

This is a non-comprehensive list of some things I want to achieve in the new year. Maybe I’ll set reminders to check in on this as the year goes on.

Downsize

I want less stuff. Every time we move there’s a box or two full of random stuff that just sits in another box or drawer until we move again. Not great! But also so tedious to go through! I’d love to take a week and just really decide what things I need, and what things are weighing me down. And also figure out eBay.

Read a book each month

I read my first full books since high school this year, and I enjoyed it a lot. I always envy readers and bookworms. I have a lot of other media I like that can eat away at my free time (games, shows, films). Zelda especially has just torpedoed my free time. I’ve loved every second of it, but wow is there a lot to do in that game.

Getting off topic. Point is: time short, want read book. I got a couple for Christmas so I’ll start there! To make it more of a tangible goal, I’ll try to read one book each month. I can already tell you I’ll fail but at least it gives me a framework.

Brush up on a language

I took three different languages in school: Spanish in junior high, Latin in high school, and German in college. I’d like to brush up on either Spanish or German in the new year.

Spanish is vastly more practical for me because of where I live, and would be used weekly if not daily.

German is of interest to me because my family is from Switzerland. Ideally I’d love to learn the Swiss-German my extended family speaks, but learning resources are scarce. And nearly all of them are fluent in English so it’s not a pressing matter. Just would feel nice to connect more with that family history.

Then there’s an entirely impractical side of me that wants to learn Japanese. Japan is the Switzerland of Asia in a lot of ways and visiting this past summer made me want to go back so badly. Probably has the most uphill battle to learn though, so maybe I’ll leave that for another year.

My tentative plan is to put on some videos and such while I do dishes or other chores, when my ears and brain are a captive audience!

Establish a workout rhythm

This is such the stereotypical New Year’s resolution, but yeah, I’d like to get fit. Specifically, I want to know what it’s like to feel “in shape”. Especially since becoming a father, there are so many things in my daily life that I think would be so much easier if my muscles were just a bit stronger or my heart and lungs a little more efficient.

How am I going to do this? Not sure yet. There’s a gym club near us that offers childcare so I might try that for a bit. I’ve tried running before and I liked it when I could find the time for it. And Fitness+ gets flack but I’ve done quite a few exercises through it and it’s honestly quite enjoyable.

I’ll end up doing a combo. Or nothing at all. But maybe me saying this into the internet will provide some sense of accountability. Ideally I just want to get into a sustainable rhythm. Doesn’t have to be much, just something.

Use public transit?

This is a tough one for me. Right now I live in the mountains on a somewhat steep, busy, and narrow road with a lot of blind turns. This makes riding a bike a bit treacherous from my home, especially after dark. When the days start to get longer, I’d like to try riding my bike to the bus station and ride the bus to work more often. It tags on quite a bit of extra time in my commute, but I’ve just grown to really resent driving recently. Tough in a car-dependent area of a car-dependent nation.

Unlock the power of Costco

At the end of this year we went to Costco a few times and I forgot how much is there in terms of building blocks for easy meals. I want to come up with some meal plans using Costco stuff to cut down on grocery costs and also make dinner a bit easier at the end of the day.

Well that’s about it. I have some other vague goals of journaling or meditating but I can’t really put it into words yet.

See you in a few months, wall of text.

It would be wrong of me to let a Sufjan release go by without urging people to listen to it. What a perfect way to enter autumn.

This is arguably his most accessible album in a decade, not only musically but lyrically. It’s not at all as pretentious and historical as Illinois, and not quite as depressive as Carrie & Lowell (although, I have to briefly defend that album’s depressiveness by saying that “Fourth of July,” with it’s lovely choral refrain of “we’re all gonna die,” is one of my most listened songs, and pulled me through some very hard times). Pitchfork put it nicely:

If the lyrics on Javelin lack the proper-noun touchstones of Stevens’ story-songs, these ones gain authority from an intrinsic sense of self and place. They are approachable like pop songs, but delivered with the same precision as his folk confessionals. They break our hearts from within.

I should also mention the dedication to his late partner Evans Richardson. There’s not a lot I can add to this. I can just say I really appreciate Sufjan’s transparency through such a difficult time of life. Javelin makes it clear that it wasn’t always an easy relationship, and he says as much in his post:

I know relationships can be very difficult sometimes, but it’s always worth it to put in the hard work and care for the ones you love, especially the beautiful ones, who are few and far between. If you happen to find that kind of love, hold it close, hold it tight, savor it, tend to it, and give it everything you’ve got, especially in times of trouble. Be kind, be strong, be patient, be forgiving, be vigorous, be wise, and be yourself. Live every day as if it is your last, with fullness and grace, with reverence and love, with gratitude and joy. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

❤️